22/11/2010

Batman Gotham Tattoo

As some of you may know, I've been getting some ink done on my arm over the summer. With stage one now complete I thought it was time to show and tell - as I for one, am very pleased with how it's looking.

*If you want to skip the background blurb, scroll to bottom to see the finished ink ;)*

Last year saw the addition of bats to my existing D&D tattoo (See I'm bats-man...) inspired by various bats I found in my Batman graphic novel collection. And true to form, within a month I started planning the next installment. I decided I wanted a sleeve but couldn't think of how to make it work, at the same time my girlfriend was keen on getting a new tattoo also, so after having trawled through many 'bird' tattoos - Ani loves birds, I love bats - I stumbled across a sleeve where the guy had birds flying out of a forest on his forearm, up towards his shoulder. I loved it, instantly I saw it transform into a cityscape with bats flying out from it - Like a child in a queue to see Santa, I was incredibly excited by the prospects.

With my mission clear I hit the graphic novels again, trying to find some appropriate examples of Gotham city that I could use to build up my sleeve. In the mean time I was re-introduced to the artwork of Dan Chase. when I last met Dan he was heavily into his graffiti art, but in the past 'X' years he's been applying his hand to tattooing - with a particular specialization in grey shade. Upon seeing the amount of detail he was capable of, I got in contact and we started working on the sleeve together, with me finding the research material, and Dan using his skills to bring it all together. Here are some of the pictures I found that I felt had the right mood, with much inspiration coming from Frank Miller and Jim Lee's Allstar 'Batman and Robin the boy wonder' (you must read it) plus some lovely artwork from 'The Batman Vault':

Due to Dan's busy schedule, it was at least 10 moths before any work began on my arm but after seeing some of his sketches I knew I was in for a treat! So as not to waffle on for any longer, here is my tattoo so far. I say so far, as there is still plenty of room left on my arm and I can see a bat cave in my future :)

Top of the arm, reworked with more bats and clouds

Forearm with Gotham city, bats and a cheeky batman hidden around the back

A close up of some of the detail in the city

And lastly, here is me just before the clouds got added, Geeking it up